Sabbatticals, Syrup and Snow

The word of the week is sabbatical.

Feb 17 - Wildlife

Life around here doesn't really stop in the winter.

Sure, the occasional day of snow does slow things down a little bit as people don't want to go speeding around when it slippery. But overall, a little overcast cloud and rain is all we've been getting this year, which I can definitely handle.

For the most part, the plants here on Vancouver Island are green all year long, with flowers stubbornly holding their own against the lower temperatures for the most part.

The wildlife too, doesn't migrate very far. In fact, given the heavily forest and nature of the Island, it's not uncommon to have wildlife come right up to your door, like these:

Can I borrow a cup of sugar?

Aren't they cute? Much cuddlier up close than a cougar would be, that's for sure. The picture was taken at my parent's place over in Cordova Bay on the east shore of the Island. There is a park on the other side of the fence - which the deer love to jump - meaning that quite often, one opens the blinds to find a fuzzy face staring back at you while it chews some leaves.

Definitely better than seeing snowmen, I think.

Feb 18 - Write On!

Lots of novel-writing time this week!

Meaning not so much making-money-to-pay-bills time, yet it seems that it's one or the other for me this year so far. In the last three weeks, I've worked three days each week and this coming week it's likely to be the same. Seeing as the job market here in Victoria is rather flat, I'm seriously looking at writing 12-18 hours a day to break into the freelancer marketplace and sell some articles.

Or doing voice work, or whatever I can to make more than the next-thing-to-a-pittance I'm making now so I can afford luxuries like food, shelter and the internet. The last one is more of a necessity, really; I can fudge the other two.

Yummy! Dig in!

Either that or learn to eat cardboard, which they just recycle at work. Can you believe that? Such a wasted opportunity, given what a lot of fast food tastes like.

Maybe I can invent a line of food made from cardboard?

Feb 19 - Mech Muscles?

Giant robots are a step closer today!

Scientists announce the successful testing of inexpensive, extraordinarily powerful artificial muscles created from of all things, nylon fishing line. Although it sounds simple, the strength of the newly developed muscles relies on the way the line is twisted and the patterns that are created from many lines strung together.

Mesmerizing, isn't it?

This is important, as the development of a low-cost artificial muscle has many, many applications in today's world. While the only one I'm currently interested in involves a life-size recreation of a 50 ton combat Mech from the BattleTech universe, more practical applications for artificial limbs, exoskeletons and humanoid robots for a variety of uses are all now much closer. Myomer muscles from BattleTech are still a cool concept though.

I just thought of another application I like to see these muscles put towards developing: the power loader from Aliens! Which coincidentally I just saw again this week; it's a solid ride of sci-fi action movie that I can't get tired of re-watching every so often, even though I know the ending.

Feb 20 - Three Days

My third week of taking a writing sabbatical wrapped up today.

Not to bore you with the details, but it's going fantastically well.

Apart from the standard fixes to spelling and grammar, there have been major additions and substantial changes to the first two thirds of the book so far. Literally hundreds of fixes and alterations have been made, chapter by chapter and line by line as the editing process has gone on.

One of the wonderful things about working solidly for days at a time on the novel is that such intense focus and concentration means the ideas began to flow together instead of separately. Looking at one aspect of the book can lead to a needed change in another and that sparks a cascade of small fixes that improve the story greatly overall.

Several major changes appeared this week, some of which made it into the text already and many others have yet to be carefully placed when the time comes. Overall, I'm very pleased with the progress being made on the third draft and I'm hoping that it will be almost complete by the time spring rolls around this year.

Feb 21 - Plugging Away

I'm feeling a work disconnect.

More and more, I want to work creatively for living. Donning a uniform and a name tag to dance to somebody else's tune has really lost all appeal to me - not that it ever really had much in the first place.

Conforming somebody else's ideal of what a Good Employee consists of usually ends up in tears for everybody involved; not literally of course, but you likely get my gist. Sales are not something that I find gratifying, although I can perform fairly well day-to-day by putting my mind into it and doing my best to be as honest as possible without shooting myself in the foot, so to speak.

Some people are better at some jobs than others and for me, it's always been about doing the job make a living. I have yet to catch wind of the job that I'd be excited to draw a paycheque for, working full-time 40 hours a week. I suppose that if I was working for myself as an entrepreneur pushing a product, then things would be different, but again I've yet to find something that fits my passion - beyond writing, that is.

And no, it's not selling edible cardboard.

Feb 22 - She's So High

Tonight was a great night!

After a solid day of getting things done around the house, including couple of small projects that have been languishing for a while, I attended a party in the evening.

It was a private function, with 40 or 50 people that I didn't really know. It was by invitation only, through someone my sister knew and I was a little nervous going there as I didn't know what to expect.

As it turned out, a whole lot of fun!

The highlight of the evening was a private performance by Tal Bachman, who performed such songs as "Ten Ton Earthquake" and "Master" which were new tunes sung in the persona of a comedic rock-star character he created named Ian Starglow. The songs were wonderfully moving, especially the ones from the second set, which definitely showed Bachman's maturity as a songwriter and I thoroughly enjoyed all of them.

It was definitely a privilege to be there to see Starglow perform!

Afterwards, I ended up talking with Tal for quite some time about the craft of writing, as it turns out he's working on scripts for a few projects. It was astonishingly refreshing to be able to speak to someone who's been in the entertainment industry and have them listen to what I have to say, given my admittedly small knowledge of such things. However, the conversation often rounded back to passion and truth, which are universals in any sort of creative art and along those lines, I was quite comfortable in speaking my mind about how my writing and my life intertwined. Tal was of the same mind in a lot of ways, thus time flew by until it was time to go and I left with a silly grin on my face from such a stellar evening.

Feb 23 - A New Narrative?

This evening I had the pleasure of watching a movie produced from Syrup, an edgy book I enjoyed a decade ago at the recommendation of a friend. Starring the exceptional Amber Heard, the movie is a comedic sendup of the entire world of corporate marketing and was rather enjoyable on the whole, though it did deviate from the book a fair piece.

He makes an interesting point, for artists...

One of the marks of a good writer is being able to present the truth through the eyes of the characters you create. I remember thinking when I first read Syrup that although I knew very little about the world that the characters in the book were inhabiting, I quickly was able to grasp the rules that they lived by and how they viewed their reality. That sort of literary magic is what I hope to bring to my own writing and I was pleased to see that the visuals of the movie were fairly close match to what was in my head from I read the book by Max Barry all those years ago.

BONUS: Another wonderful bit of news arrived this evening, by e-mail. I'm going to be narrating a story for a scifi/fantasy podcast in the near future! Once everything's been confirmed, I'll mention more details in the blog but as you can imagine, I'm rather excited!

As good a way as any to end the week, I think! 

A last-minute phone call from a coworker means that I'm now working for shifts this week, which is good. It does put a bit of a cramp on my writing, but that just means I can focus more on each of the two days now I have left to work. I'm hoping that in March, things will return to more normal hours, but I'll still be asking for no more than four days a week to leave me three in which to edit my novel… on top of pursuing other forms of income and creative outlets as well!